F2T goes down under with Injustice 2 Superman, Badge3d.

Thanks for tuning in for a fun mid-week special. I realized there’s a whole creative side of our community and it’s casual and competitive players. I wanted to start sharing that through cosplay and fan-art in our community each week to keep you excited while waiting for Sunday’s weekly interviews.

I feel the creative side is under looked a lot because some aren’t always the ones you see on stream competing. But unknowingly they are doing us all a service. The creative people doing fan art or costumes for example, are putting our game out there. They’re servicing to all other audiences our competitive streams may not reach. It’s a beautiful thing that only has the potential to allow our community grow. I would like to introduce my first guest on this feature, Badge3d.

So Badge3d, I would like you to welcome you as a guest to our first creative feature.

Here at First to Ten we typically interview the players and various persona in the NetherRealm Studios fighting game community. I saw your Superman cosplay in a post on Derek’s twitter and really thought it would be awesome to feature you as a mid-week mini session First to Five. We will keep it to 5 questions but they all should be able to explain about who you are and your work you’ve done on this cosplay as well as any others you may have done related to the games.

Tell us about yourself first. Who are you? Where are you from? What was the first NetherRealm game you fell in love with? What do you love most about Injustice 2?

Woah hello wow-wee !!! So many questions !!! I am the badge aka Lucas Pearson and I’m a cosplayer, gamer, movie/comic buff gym junkie from Melbourne, Australia. To be honest I’ve known Mortal Kombat for as long as I can remember, although, to answer your question ‘Injustice: Gods Among Us’. The game just had such an awesome take on a story from the DC universe that was separate to the main continuity whilst having the classic 1v1 gameplay style from Mortal Kombat. To be straight up with you, the graphics and AMAZING costumes and character skins is what I love most about Injustice 2. A massive upgrade from the first injustice game, it really gave many cosplayers a challenge to meet the mark on bringing their best to the table with injustice 2 cosplay builds.

How long have you been cosplaying for? What was the first cosplay you created?

I’ve been cosplaying now for about 18 months now and the first cosplay I did was a Deathstroke hybrid across a few different universes. The first I ACTUALLY created myself was an Arkham Origins Deathstroke which was entirely 3d printed and finished in 3 months. I still to this day have no idea how I accomplished this !

Deathstroke cosplay mentioned above.

I see that you do 3D printing which is becoming popular very quickly as a medium in cosplay.

Absolutely, I could talk all day about this. I build my first 3d printer from a kickstarter kit (not recommended) about a year ago and started from their, I’ve now got 4 printers and honestly it’s so exciting to see the community begin to dabble in the magic of it for making prop weapons and armor. As time goes on it’s much easier for people to get into 3d printing as technology advances and becomes more affordable with the Chinese cloning top end printers. The future is definitely bright for the cosplay industry with 3d printing as a tool.

How long do prints normally take for you and how long did it take to make the pieces for your Superman? Did you use a program to 3D model them yourself? Where / how was the suit you wore under created?

So the printing part is quite easy for me. Their is some expertise that is required to run a 3D printer in both the software and hardware, although, I feel I’m quite adept after 12 months. To have all the pieces printed it took me around 2 weeks allowing margin for error with failed prints (it happens). On top of the print time, a lot of body work i.e sanding is required to perfectly smooth out and prep a 3d printed part for painting which took a good month to get to a level I was happy with. The 3D model itself was commissioned by a 3D CAD service as I’m still in the early stages of learning 3d modeling programs such as Zbrush. The undersuit was a screen printed spandex suit on top of a latex muscle suit which was glued together in order to show the muscle definition as such.

The under suit with some armor for the Superman cosplay.

What was PAX Aus like for you? Did you have fun seeing the tournament there? What future cosplays will you be doing and are any of them Mortal Kombat or Injustice related?

PAX Aus is by far my favorite convention to date as it’s so different to what other conventions have to offer. To be able to go in play your favorite games as well as new releases and meet game designers like my new friend Derek, is just wayyy to cool. We also met Tom Taylor who writes the Injustice 2 comics which overwhelmed me as I just love the story. The tournament was absolutely surreal to see one of my favorite games being battled out by the pros on a massive screen ! We didn’t enter it but we played Derek and he absolutely smashed us with Cheetah and Poison Ivy whilst having a general chat with us about life !

I’ve had friends tell me I’d be a great Kotal Khan so perhaps I should go for it ? Otherwise I was thinking either a Green Lantern, Jay Garrick Flash, Deadshot or even my own version of a Cyborg Superman using parts from both Cyborg and Superman respectively!!!